


A Strange Madness

by epkitty



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Confused!Henry, Desperate!Jonathan, Dubious Consent, First Time, Kink Meme, M/M, Seduction, more of a ravishment really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:52:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4779563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epkitty/pseuds/epkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From this kink meme prompt:</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Henry's gotten no love here yet, and I admit a terrible desire to see a grief-stricken, half-mad Jonathan seducing his brother in law. I want to see guilt, shock, Henry being totally overwhelmed and confused, and way more responsive than he thought he would ever be. Dubcon welcome.</em></p><p> </p><p>For this fill, I decided Henry must absolutely go to Venice. Things happen to him. Strange, Strange things.</p><p>Warning is for Dubious Consent.</p><p>(Slightly edited from my original post on the meme; hope I caught all the typos.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Henry

**Author's Note:**

> I had so much fun writing this; it was a challenge I greatly enjoyed, and I hope you enjoy reading it!

The Reverend Henry Woodhope considered his life most fulfilling.

His parishioners in Great Hitherden were a reasonably devoted flock whose troubles were manageable, foibles forgivable, manners lovely, and invitations to dinner always warm and heartily meant.

His living - the advowson granted to him by Sir Walter Pole at Jonathan Strange's request - was a generous one, and he wanted for nothing in the parsonage, which was suitably appointed, reasonably near to the church, and the rooms of which managed to be well-lit at all times of day.

His life was blessed in many ways, and every day he gave thanks to God that his blessings outweighed his troubles by miles and miles.

The Reverend Henry Woodhope could not consider himself a lonely man, and in fact Henry Woodhope had never in his life considered himself lonely at all, until the day he learned of the death of his beloved only sister.

=

Not being young, Henry had known loss before. And being a clergyman, he had coached too many people through their own losses already. But the death of his sister - so vibrant and quick-smiling and full of the charm that a lively and inquisitive mind inspires - was a blow to him far greater than he could ever have anticipated. Never in his life had he been closer to a person than to Arabella.

But then to witness the treatment of her corpse at the hands of her husband - a man who had been Henry's greatest friend through the better part of his life - was a torment almost above that which he could stand.

Henry did not cry at her funeral service. He had shed his tears already. But beside that, he had a solemn duty to perform, and the tears on that occasion were reserved for Strange alone. Those tears were sparing and exhausted and Henry was struck by the sudden notion that Strange's tears would taste more of sorrow than of salt.

It was a bitter parting. The frustrated fire of the hope that had enflamed Strange for the past week had burned out into an eerie hollowness that revealed itself in the dull tones of Strange's voice, the empty windows of his eyes, and the strange void of his shadow. Henry had never been so disturbed by a shadow, and he had never feared the taint of magic as he did then. 

Henry had tried for the whole of seven days to be both brother and religious comforter to Strange, but it had been all for naught. 

They sat together one last time over tea, and spoke almost not at all.

Before he left for Northamptonshire, Henry sat beside him and placed his hand on the man's arm. "Jonathan," he pleaded, "You will find no comfort here in Ashfair. There are…" he almost said ghosts. He almost said, 'there are ghosts here,' by which he did not mean the spirits of those gone, but only the echoes of too many things that had come before. "There are too many memories here. Come back with me to Great Hitherden for a time."

"Oh, and for what?" Strange said- almost _spat_ at him. "For your prayers? To keep house for you? That you might continue your lecturing indefinitely?" Strange made a scoffing sound of derision that was edged with some strange chaos. "Your cold comfort does nothing for me, Henry. And your God did nothing for Arabella." 

Henry stood then, and he left. He offered no parting words. He had used up all his words. He had used up all his hope and sorrow and pity and patience. He left Strange with nothing but the empty space beside him on the sopha and the empty cup drained of tea and the emptiness of the man himself.

If Strange was in fact as empty as he seemed, Henry feared what he might fill himself up with again.

=

The return journey to his parish should have felt like going home.

It felt like a betrayal.

Henry thought upon their time together in boyhood: time at his father's parish in St. Swithin's, time at Ashfair avoiding Strange Sr., time with Arabella frolicking joyfully between them in the countryside of Shropshire, all of which they laid claim to as their playground. They were pirates in an old washtub and the rolling Clunbury field of green was their sea. They were Indians tracking the deer through the mild wilderness of Ashfair's furthest grounds. They were witches calling down the rain on a parched afternoon, and returned to St. Swithin's for the well water so fresh and sweet it might have been faeries' nectar.

Henry thought upon their time together as young men: one seeking a well-known path, the other wandering hither and yon as though no path might ever be found to serve him. And Arabella between them, always encouraging and calm and light-hearted and sweet. Henry and Strange remained friends despite the divergence of their livelihoods. 'Stolid Henry,' Strange called him as Henry sought his education and position in life. Henry did not have the heart to call Strange names, but he often thought to himself: Foolish Jonathan, Spirited Jonathan, Sparkling Jonathan. The man could have been a menace to more than himself, but for his natural good-heartedness. Henry sometimes marveled that Strange turned out as well as he did, considering that he grew up in the shadow of an increasingly resentful father, for Laurence Strange had - in the end - proved a worthless little spit of a man clinging to life with the grasping hand of a hardened miser.

Henry thought upon their time together in their later years: himself a curate in a Gloucestershire church with his sister keeping house for him, content in all things but for their joint concern over Jonathan Strange and his wandering spirit. Henry was thankful that spirit had come to some joy and constancy when joined with Arabella's. 

But then: there was the magic.

It was far too uncanny, this unholy mix of words and gestures and will producing effects that England had not been witness to in over two hundred years.

And all of it led to this. His dear sister dead of a strange winter wandering. His brother-in-law half-mad with the agony of her loss.

The return journey to his parish should have felt like going home, but when Henry entered the sadly darkened hall, he barely had the heart to light even a single candle, and even that small light seemed like too much at the thought that Arabella could not light one of her own and stand at his side. 

As he made his way up to his bed chamber, his thoughts turned again to Jonathan Strange. He suddenly thought he might never be able to think of anything else. He wondered if Jonathan had anyone to light a candle for him as the darkness came in, or if he'd chased all the servants off in some fit of pique. Surely, he would not think to light a candle for himself.

As he prepared himself for bed, he thought of his sister. Her body was safe in its grave. Her soul was safe with the Lord. She might be the safest of them Henry thought, for Jonathan's mourning was not quite like any Henry had before seen, and Henry himself found such strangely twined strands of love and sorrow and regret and dread before him that he feared a bit for his own self as well.

And as he lay himself down to sleep, he felt loneliness for the first time. For the first time in his memory, he closed his eyes to the night and did not send up anything like a prayer.

=

Henry Woodhope and Jonathan Strange did not see one another again before Strange returned to London.

= 

His parishioners were earnest in their condolences at the loss of his sister, but Henry could could not take the sort of solace he wished from them.

His living in Great Hitherden was of only small comfort to him, for it meant he did not have to worry about any practical thing; this only let him turn to worrying about all the impractical things, mostly Jonathan Strange.

His life was once so settled and sure, and now it was like living a part in a play that he had memorized long ago and had lost interest in performing.

But then, just when Henry thought that life had begun to take on its glimmers of hope and joy again, he began reading in the newspapers about how the parting of ways of England's two magicians was unfolding upon the streets of London.

Henry worried vicariously until he finally set himself down at his desk to compose a letter, deciding that he ought to put off his worries until he could hear back from the man himself.

He feared that his letter of hesitating inquiry might not merit a response, but Strange replied with surprising promptness. The tone of this letter was distracted, but honest and Strange was obviously eager about the work upon his book as well as the possibility of pupils of his own in the near future.

=

But in too short a time - as soon as his manuscript hit his publisher's desk - Strange disappeared from London altogether. Rumors of where exactly he had gone were filtered through a number of publications, none of which could agree on where exactly he had last been seen. As soon as one of Strange's military acquaintances swore the magician had been seen in Belgium, some other declared the man had been in Geneva. Was it Turin, then? Or Genoa? One witness swore up and down that Strange had been seen in the company of Lord Byron somewhere in Swisserland.

Henry gave up on the newspapers altogether and tried (and failed) to stop thinking about Strange at all.

But as soon as he had given up this endeavor, Henry heard from no less than four of his own gossiping parishioners that Strange had gone to Venice and there he stayed with some new acquaintances: an English family also touring the Continent.

Finally, his fears and suppositions could be laid to rest, for Jonathan Strange took it upon himself to write Henry a letter and in it he put down a great deal about his travels and his new friends, and he wrote in depth about how very cross he still was at Mr. Norrell.

Henry had barely finished reading the letter through before he determined to write back, and in haste he sat himself down to compose a reply urging Strange against all those things he was so susceptible to-- all of which boiled down to impetuousness. Henry counseled wisdom, thoughtfulness, forgiveness, and patience.

Mr. Strange's eventual response was unimpressed with Henry's attempts at what he called 'a pastoral rector's holy meddling' and his language displayed no attempts at courtesy or kindliness.

Henry's response was pointed, but still persuasively hopeful.

The letter from Jonathan that followed was full of vitriol and spite, but - despite this - all around the edges of cruel words and hidden between abrupt sentences, Henry could see echoes of his oldest friend's humor and good nature.

But one day, the letters stopped. Henry continued writing, but no more responses did he receive. He wondered if Jonathan Strange's tempestuous nature had perhaps urged him to move on from Venice, maybe even toward home?

These hopes were dashed at the first rumor of madness.

Henry found himself again poring over the newspapers, and while he consumed the outlandish tales of the English magician gone mad in Venice, he did not read with the avid sensationalism of so many, but with the concern of a friend.

So affected was he, that he finally found the truth in himself of what must be done. If Strange's friends in London would not help him, and if his friends in Venice _could_ not help him, then Henry himself must go, for who else in the world was looking after Jonathan Strange?

Without delay, he applied to his local ordinary for permission to take leave from his parish for a time, with the ultimate goal of retrieving his brother-in-law from the hands of madness. While it was not generally believed that God or magic could do the man any good, a reverend from Lancashire was sent to temporarily take over Henry's duties in Great Hitherden, and Henry set out for Venice.

Having never been further abroad than Edinburgh, this was something quite out of his usual way, and he should never have afforded it but for the patronage of Sir Walter Pole, who agreed to pay his way and sent with him the hope that Strange would be returned to them in good health and spirits.

This, too, was Henry's dearest wish as he set foot upon the ship that would take him across the Channel.


	2. Jonathan

Jonathan's quest was a twisted puzzle-- a sort of logic puzzle where one was not permitted to use logic. For how does one achieve insanity with such strident purpose? Insanity may be stumbled upon, fallen into, inherited, or absorbed through poison perhaps. But a man does not simply open the right book and learn the various methods. A man cannot simply knock upon the right door and look madness in the face. Certainly not at the first try, or the second, or the tenth or twentieth, he was finding.

He wondered if determination alone could achieve it, for it seemed that might be all he had left after his researches and trials.

Frustrations mounted before him like immovable obstacles, battered at him like a storm of crows' wings, ensnared him like twisting rooted tendrils determined to keep him bound to sense. 

Strange did not want sense or reason; he wanted a clarity of vision that he believed could come only through madness.

Thank heavens for Mrs. Delgado, or he might never have managed it otherwise.

The problem after that, of course, was of maths.

= 

You wouldn't think - nor I neither - that maths had a single thing to do with any kind of mental imbalance, but the problem of percentages persists throughout everything we do.

Jonathan Strange could see that now, the same way he could see the blood running through the people in the street in its twining currents or hear the funny way they squawked at one another as soon as their friends' backs were turned.

People all over the world were funny like that, he came to realize. As soon as you knew a man, he turned into a gibberish-spewing lecturer. As soon as you knew a woman, she turned into death. And that wasn't any fair at all.

=

There were times when he was lucid, and perfectly content to talk to Flora Greysteel in the same manner he would with any young person so interested in magic. Magic was all that was left to him now, and so he talked about magic with her and about the summoning of fairies and sometimes about percentages, but he seemed to lose her attention after that. 

Or maybe he lost his own attention. It was difficult to tell.

It was difficult to tell the landlord to go away, he was perfectly-fine-thank-you-very-much, and difficult to tell sometimes when his trials had worn off or if he was still Jonathan Strange at all.

Occasionally, he woke up still fully clothed or completely naked and then would try to decipher his own notes from the previous night when he'd been experimenting with the essence of mouse, but his own handwriting was a blur, sometimes appearing to be in a foreign language he'd never learned, and mostly he forgot to write anything at all whist entwined with the effects of the tincture.

This made figuring percentages far more difficult.

=

He had a dream that he was a little silver cat, and could slip about Venice within its shadows, like walking on the King's Roads, only he was a feline and the shadows were smooth marble and his claws were very sharp.

In the dream, he saw people he thought he'd known once upon a time. One of them was tall and dark with ragged hair and had a large black bird perched upon his shoulder. He (the man, not the bird) recognized the little silver cat and addressed him as "Mr. Strange." The little silver cat did not know who Mr. Strange was, but he did not like the look of the bird and so moved on. 

Then a small, funny man tried to speak to him about _florilegia_ , epitomes, and skimmers. The little gray cat did not care, but only began to wonder if there was anything to eat thereabouts.

At one point he saw a man neither young nor old all dressed in black with a bible in one hand and a headstone in the other. The little cat wondered that the man could so easily carry the headstone, but then reflected that people did not always show their most obvious strengths, so that might explain it.

His feline wanderings took him through a canal that smelled of sewage (unpleasant) and fish (far less so), a battlefield where strawberries bloomed from the gaping holes in the corpses of the dead, and a City street that seemed at once familiar and also unlike any street a cat had ever been on before. When he turned the corner, the little silver cat was on a snowy hillside and a woman in a black dress stumbled toward him.

When Jonathan Strange awoke, he had no recollection of the dream until later in the day when he bit into a piece of fish at his midday meal and found that it tasted like regret. And mouse fur.

=

Maths had never been such a difficult subject.

One drop: a touch of madness, barely enough to notice that the birds spoke a very specific language and that flowers sounded very beautiful, if only one took the time to listen.

Three drops: a wind of causality blew through a man and calmed his center until he held the universe in his palm and could calmly walk about the place without all the worries that so afflicted mankind in the modern age.

Seven drops: the thunder of knowledge struck through his core and flung open all the windows so that he might truly see the so many things that had been unclear before, like the dying of the sun when it screamed goodnight and all the funny little worms that writhed in the air that one was apt to walk into if one did not look at where one was going.

Twelve drops: mutton-chops were a sensible thing indeed and why did not every one wear them? After all, it only took a shift in one's perception to realize that all those ridiculous _feelings_ ladies were always going on about were caused by the pigeons, and if only we could get rid of the pigeons all would be well. But then what was the point of statues if they had no pigeons? Strange decided the next time he saw a statue, he would ask it. So long as it was a statue of a thing with a mouth, he supposed it would tell him. Only why was it that the little candles flickered so and when did the pineapple delivery come? He could not remember ordering any and the landlord was very suspicious, what with all those leaves coming out.

=

Twelve drops was too many.

=

In the morning, he decided to try smaller doses again.

One drop, taken with tea and honey and the excellent little croissant-things that came up to his room every morning. (They did not come up by themselves; they were brought by a servant girl who ran away as soon as he took the tray from her, even though he was very polite to her when he remembered to be.)

A single drop of the tincture did not soothe in the same way a stronger dose did, but it was a helpful reminder to him that the walls of his sordid little room were crumbling and that if he were to peel away the plaster - maybe later - he would find the answers he needed there.

Something prickled at the back of his mind and he remembered Arabella and the fairy servant and the spell he was to use to summon the creature.

Later.

Maybe another drop. Clearly a single dose mixed with tea would only make his skin itch the rest of the day. And besides, he did not want to think of Arabella dead, and that was suddenly the only thing he could think of.

He lost track of the drops from the bottle. Surely it had been only one more. Or was it two?

He drank it, realized it was not the morning's teacup, but some sludge he'd been having the night before. He drank it anyway, unable to waste a drop, for if there was no more mouse-tincture, he did not think he would ever be able to eat or crawl again.

Something jarred his concentration as the manic necessity of writing overwhelmed him. He sat at his desk with ink and paper, saddened by the knowledge that there was not enough ink and paper in all the world for him to get out all his words-- there was so much inside his head! The remarkable way to remove one's own heart for safekeeping had just revealed itself to him and so he began to write down the most specific methods of it, using whatever came to hand-- his ledger and then old receipts, and finally some unread letters signed by a man named Henry that Strange was sure he knew.

He did know a Henry once, did he not?

All sorts of fellows went by Henry, so he was sure he did, and he was uncertain why the ache of loss panged through him over and over as he wrote out the various ingredients for undying love.

By the time he ran out of paper, he'd moved on to the walls. He was not sure the landlord would be pleased, but as soon as he could copy them out properly, he would pay for new walls, and no one could find fault with such an offer as that.

He was having trouble concentrating upon the spell he was writing out. He was absolutely positive that it was a spell of his own devising, though he was not sure what it might be used for-- when there was a knock upon the door.

Jonathan Strange supposed he ought to answer it, for the landlord did not like to be kept waiting and would insist on knocking him up all hours of the night just to be sure he had not set his room afire or some such.

When he opened the door, Jonathan Strange discovered it was not the landlord, but his brother-in-law.

Jonathan looked up and down the hall as though expecting something, perhaps an ambush. Finally, he looked at Henry and asked, "You did not bring any pineapples, did you?"

"Pineap-- no! Jonathan, I've heard the most dreadful rumors--"

"Come in!" Jonathan demanded, grabbing Henry's arm and dragging him bodily into the room.


	3. Henry & Jonathan

Henry allowed himself to be dragged inside and discovered himself to be in a largish room, once nicely appointed but now ragged about the edges, and its current resident had done nothing to improve it, for Jonathan had turned the tabletop into a sort of laboratory, the desk into a mound of papers, the bed into something of a nest, and at least three of the walls into a surface for writing.

Henry took all this in as he stumbled forward and allowed Jonathan to drag him over to the whitewashed wall, which the man returned to scrawling on with a little chunk of coal.

"It shouldn't need a handsel," Strange muttered, his hand wavering as it hovered an inch away from the wall, the charcoal gripped so tight his knuckles showed white. "Or should it? For a summoning?"

"Jonathan," Henry pleaded, aghast at the great changes he found in his friend, for the man's eyes were red from lack of sleep and his hands (whenever they held still) displayed a shivering tremor that Jonathan himself seemed unaware of. The gray in his hair was more noticeable than when last Henry had seen him, and his clothes were unwashed and beginning to fray. The housecoat he wore was a mottled black and reminded Henry of nothing so much as a wounded raven dragging its wings behind it.

Henry reached out to place his hand over Strange's where it hovered tremulously before the wall. In the midst of a still and silent moment, Henry eased the charcoal from his hand and cast it aside as he carefully turned Jonathan to face him.

Jonathan Strange allowed all of this without resisting, his thoughts half elsewhere as he turned the words over in his head and muttered a few of them. "Handsel. Handsel. I shall have to ask Norrell." His gaze darted up and he seemed to see Henry for the first time. A smile broke out on Jonathan's face and he gripped Henry's upper arms. "Henry Woodhope! It has been ages! Come! Come sit, here."

Jonathan showed him to the center of the room and cleared a chair of what Henry supposed might be ingredients for spellwork. He was relieved to see the man carefully pick them up and move them elsewhere rather than sweep them onto the floor, which Henry had been almost certain he would do.

Henry used his handkerchief to discreetly wipe the dust and stains from the seat before he sat and then turned his attention to Jonathan, who was sitting at his desk and attempting to bring some order to the papers there. The magician looked up. "You did not bring any paper, perchance?"

"I-- No."

"It is no matter," Jonathan said, setting aside a stack of notebooks to clear a bit of space for his elbows.

"When did you last eat?" Henry asked, spying the dinner tray, untouched, at the corner of the desk.

"Oh, I do not know. Who cares for such things? I am not hungry."

"Aren't you?"

Jonathan thought about this. "Do you know? I think I might be."

"Please, let me call for dinner. I have not had even a bite since I arrived."

"Oh no!" Jonathan jumped to his feet. "Yes, we must eat at once, but the food here is only tolerable. There is an excellent little place just down the street, in the palazzo! We shall eat there, and I shall pay and you shall tell me all the news from England!"

"Are you… feeling up to going out?" Henry gave him an appraising and rather worried look.

"Oh yes. Yes-- in fact, I believe I will find the fresh air most invigorating. Come, come!" Jonathan gave a curt gesture and so Henry sighed and climbed to his feet and then followed the man through the tall door, along the twisting hall, down the narrow stairs, and out into the dusk-tinged street. 

"You are still wearing your housecoat," Henry pointed out after a time.

"Oh, it does not signify," Jonathan said, linking his arm through Henry's. "Men walk like this all the time on the continent." It was unclear whether he meant arm-in-arm or in their housecoats. "And all the folk hereabouts have put up very well with me whilst I ramble about the whole of Venice asking for things I shouldn't and wearing whatever I please." He smiled at a passing couple, who quickly looked away and moved a bit faster down the street.

"Here," Jonathan said abruptly and gestured to the building they had almost passed, where a narrow door was squeezed into a cheerful yellow brick facade. Henry had to duck to enter, and beyond the threshold he found a cramped, but cheerily lit space with a low ceiling. A man hurried over to formally greet them, even though it looked a bit like someone's extended dining room, rather than a proper restaurant.

"Ah," the man said when he spied just who had come in. His face fell a bit, the customary smile lagging as he said, "Signor Strange."

"Yes! Good evening--" He stopped to correct himself. " _Buona sera! Come va?_ "

The man muttered a response, his eyes betraying his nervousness as he carefully watched the English magician struggle through a bit more Italian.

Strange haltingly spoke, "Oh, um… _Una tavola per due, per favore_." 

As the man showed them to a table, Strange turned to Henry to say, "This is Signor Farina, and these are his premises. You will not find better food within the whole of Venice. Signor Farina," he went on as they sat at their little table squished into a corner, "My I present my brother-in-law, Henry Woodhope. He is a--" Strange struggled to find the word, "what you would call _curato_." 

"Ah!" The man seemed relieved by this and brandished menus at them. "Very good. You are here to care for Signor Strange?"

"I very much hope so," Henry said, feeling a bit out of his depth.

Jonathan waved the menu away. "Just bring us your best everything. _Vino_ first! Your best!"

" _Si_ , Signor."

Truth to tell, the man looked relieved to leave them.

Then Jonathan Strange leaned forward, folded his hands before him, and smiled at Henry Woodhope.

Henry was suddenly taken aback, and felt as though he had to overcome a mental stumbling block before he could say a word.

"Jonathan," he finally said, "Do you know why I've come?"

Strange's brows drew together in deep thought. "No," he admitted, his entire countenance one of puzzlement.

"You received my letters?"

"Oh, yes! Your letters! I… I did reply to them, did I not?"

"You did, at first," Henry allowed. "But two months ago, your letters stopped. I have been… just so worried for you. Since Ara-- Since my sister died, I have been nothing but worried for you."

"Ah," Jonathan said, looking down at the candles that illuminated their tiny patch of intimacy in the closely furnished room.

A young woman weaved her way between the tables to them, set down two glasses, and poured the wine.

Henry waited until she swished away to continue, though Jonathan immediately took up his glass to drink.

"When your letters stopped, and all the newspapers took up with their rumors of your travels-- I could handle that. Truly, I could. But there have been reports about you, from more than one who claim to know you personally."

Jonathan was giving him a most peculiar look, half evaluating and half amused. "And what did your reports tell you?"

"I have heard that you are unwell."

"You have heard that I am mad," Jonathan willingly corrected him.

"Well, yes."

"The rumors are only half true. For I am only half mad at any given time. Really, all you had to do was ask." And then he drank more of his wine as though the subject was closed.

"Jonathan, you may have stopped replying to my letters, but I never stopped writing them. I did ask. I asked you any number of things, and in my final letter I told you I would be coming to Venice to find you."

"Oh." Jonathan sobered at this and peered guiltily up from where he'd hunched over the table. In something of a whisper, he confessed, "I do not think I read them."

Henry only gave a stiff nod.

"Please," Jonathan tried, "let us be friends again. Tell me of England, and whether you've seen Norrell, and-- and-- all about the latest fashions."

Henry gave a small, unexpected laugh. "Since when do you care about fashions?"

"Oh, I don't really, but we must have a third topic of conversation."

"Must we?"

"Yes. A young lady of my acquaintance told me so."

"Then it must be true," Henry sighed fondly, finally taking up his own wine to drink. "This… this wine is marvelous."

"Well, I did order the best of everything."

"So you did," Henry agreed, and smiled - his own real smile - for the first time in ages.

=

They passed a surprisingly pleasant meal together.

Jonathan abruptly changed the subject of their conversation only twice, and Henry affirmed that his dinner might well be the best thing he'd ever tasted.

When it came time to pay the bill, Signor Farina hesitantly eased over to them and asked of Jonathan, "You have not forgot--"

"No! No, not again," Strange promised as he withdrew a wad of banknotes and peeled off several. "And here's for the last time, too. See? I promised I would remember!"

" _Si. Grazie_ , Signor." The very relieved man left them as soon as was polite.

While the men were not exactly drunk, they were not precisely sober either, and it was the most natural thing in the world - once they had managed to wend their way out of the confining restaurant - to link arms once more. As tired as Henry was from his travels, he consented to a brief tour of the local area, and Jonathan showed him a few marvelous sights, as well as many beautiful ones, until the night air had cooled their brows and the walk had fatigued them so that nothing sounded so glorious as a room to stow themselves away in.

Jonathan led them back to the building from which his room was let, and together they left the night-smeared street, shuffled their way slowly up the narrow stairs, bumped along the twisting hall, and finally passed through the tall door.

The landlord had placed Henry's one small bag inside the room, as well as some fresh bedding, although no attempts had been made to change the bed itself or indeed to clean any part of the room.

They took turns at the wash basin in the corner and then Strange sat at his desk, slowly leafing through the papers there. He looked up occasionally at the wall he'd been writing on, but it was plain that he could make little of what he saw there.

Henry watched all this carefully, and when Strange caught his gaze, the magician smiled broadly and said, "Have no fear, Henry. All is well. We are friends again, and I cannot wait to tell Arabella…" 

Here he drifted off, his smile fell, and he gazed into some middle distance where his vision wavered at something Henry suspected did not exist.

Henry came around the desk to stand beside him and place a hand on his shoulder. "Oh, Jonathan…" It was almost a petition, but whether Henry might be begging Jonathan himself or some higher power was unclear.

Jonathan suddenly turned to bury his face in Henry's midriff and entwine his strangling arms about the man.

"Henry," he breathed out, "You smell of England."

Henry awkwardly placed a hand on each of the man's shoulders and tried giving a few comforting pats. Physical condolences were not in his nature, nor in the nature of many Englishmen of his generation or station. 

"I am sure you are imagining it," Henry replied. "I might consider it a small miracle if I do not still smell of the ship that brought me here."

"I smell the salt," Jonathan slowly agreed, his face pressed in close to the fabric of the black waistcoat. "But beneath that. I smell England, too."

"How can you smell England?" Henry asked. It was a philosophical question meant rhetorically, but Strange answered him anyway.

"Cowslip," Jonathan said simply. "Lavender and rosemary. Roses. Lily of the valley." He pressed his face in closer, his nose digging into Henry's hip as he inhaled deeply. "Powder and pomade. Tea. And hearty bread." 

"I think that's more me and less England," Henry sighed, unsure what to do when he discovered he could not easily disentangle himself from Jonathan's demanding embrace.

"Good," Jonathan sighed, and then he turned his head to simply rest against the man's ribs and hold him. "You smell like home," Jonathan breathed out the whisper, and his embrace snared him even tighter.

"You cannot be comfortable," Henry observed. "I know I am not." He sighed with the sort of forbearance he was accustomed to employ around the energies of his friend Jonathan Strange.

"No," Jonathan agreed. Barely releasing his devil's grip, Jonathan stood so that he might wrap his arms around Henry's shoulders instead and bury his face in the crook of the man's neck.

Henry only stood there and sighed. "Much better," he mumbled into the mass of Jonathan's hair that had fallen into his face.

"Please," Jonathan mumbled into the sensitive skin of Henry's neck.

"Please what?" Henry asked, without truly wanting to, suddenly overcome by the weird closeness he found himself trapped in, by the humid breath at his neck and the clenching fingers at his back and the lean strength crushed up against him.

"Please," Jonathan repeated, and those hot lips at Henry's neck changed from the happenstance pressure of an anguished embrace into to a messy, purposeful kiss.

"Jonathan…"

"Please," Jonathan said again, but this time it was louder, pleading, desperate. "Please," he whined, high-pitched and more needful than anything Henry had ever heard as the man pulled him even closer, the whole of their bodies pressed so close they might merge into one.

Henry lifted his arms to Strange's sides and gently pushed at him. "Jonathan," he said with more than a note of pleading to his own voice now, "I came here to help you, but you must tell me what you have done, what I can do…"

Strange pulled away and released Henry only long enough to transfer his spidery fingers to frame Henry's face in a soft but unrelenting grip and look him dead in the eye from only inches away as he breathed one more time, " _Please_ …" and leaned forward to kiss Henry's mouth.

Henry was far too surprised to do anything other than stand there, wondering for a moment if he'd gone mad himself somewhere, and from what place such twisted imaginings would come. A moment later, he recalled that it was Jonathan alone who had gone mad, or at least had the appearance of it, and so again Henry tried to gently push him away.

Jonathan pulled back only enough to press their foreheads together, his wild eyes closed as their breaths mingled between them.

"Please," Jonathan said once more, and his voice was so broken and simple and frayed to its final edges that Henry doubted he could resist him much longer.

"You should go to bed," Henry said, and he said it so quietly as to be nearly empty of breath, for he could not recall being this close to another person in the whole of his life, except perhaps in childhood, and to speak any louder would have seemed a sacrilege in this strange place he'd found himself.

"Yes," Strange agreed, and with his hands pinching Henry's shoulders he walked the man backwards until the backs of Henry's knees hit something and he fell.

Henry landed on the mess of covers on the bed with Strange on top of him, mouthing at his neck and squirming over him and - Henry belatedly realized - crying.

Henry was at once appalled to find himself in such a very odd and uncomfortable situation, but also consumed with sympathy for the trials Jonathan had put himself through. Henry did not know what had led to this, except of course that it had all started with Arabella's death, but had now gone so very much further than the everyday grief he was almost accustomed to as a reverend. 

"Jonathan," he said, as soothingly as he could, "Jonathan, you must rest." He tried (awkwardly and with no success at all) to shift the man to one side or another. Between the depth of the mattress and the mess of the blankets, Henry was stuck in a valley of cloth and feathers with a magician atop him.

"I cannot rest," Jonathan hissed from behind a clenched jaw, as though the formation of an entire sentence was an ordeal he was nearly incapable of. "I cannot do anything like it; I want to be… please, just _close_ to _someone_." Then, "Henry," he said, like a revelation as he stared down at him, cradling the man's face, the clerical wig askew and his wide eyes beyond confusion.

Jonathan's tears fell on Henry's lips, stilling any more words Henry might attempt when Jonathan ducked his head to lick the trail of tears away.

"Oh, God," Henry moaned as he realized what exactly it was that was so particularly uncomfortable about the region of their hips. Jonathan's arousal was pressing into him and it was only then that Henry realized he himself was hard as well, for the first time in a good many years, if one discounted the occasional morning.

"Jonathan, you must stop," Henry said, almost shouted, suddenly more eager than before to get away from the man, for both their sakes.

"But I cannot," Jonathan answered as he continued crying and kissed Henry again, only this time it was not merely a sudden press of lips or odd lick, but a filthy joining as he smothered Henry's mouth with his own until their teeth clicked together and Jonathan licked into his mouth as though to find what he needed there.

Jonathan stopped only long enough to explain, "You taste like home, too," before kissing him again, the way a man kisses when he is distraught with too many things to concentrate on it, so that in one moment he breathed in the air from Henry's lungs and in the next he did nothing but drag their lips together and apart over and over.

Henry had frozen for a very long moment, allowing all of this not because he wanted it but because he was so out of his depth that any action at all seemed utterly impossible, except the occasional vocal attempt to calm Jonathan, to ease him into some state that was less grief-and-madness and more peace-and-sense.

All to no avail, for the varied kisses did not stop and Jonathan himself seemed to finally notice their mutual state of arousal as he whimpered and began rutting against him in small, jerky motions.

And still the man wept, as though a new region of sorrow had been unlocked within him and if he did not allow the tears, they would well up inside and flood what was left of his reason.

"Jonathan," Henry tried again and, "Jonathan," again. Henry finally raised his own hands to find them shaking and moved as though to push his dearest friend away, but instead found himself smoothing his fingers through the tangled, graying hair as one might lull a distraught child. "Jonathan, you must stop this madness."

"It-It isn't madness," Jonathan hissed into his ear as his hands crept under Henry's wig to pet at the soft, spiky crop of his hair beneath. "It is just… _right_."

"No," Henry argued, "It is very wrong. We cannot…"

"I think you'll find we can," Jonathan said as his tears finally slowed and he gazed with determined wonder into Henry's face and leaned down to kiss him anew, like a young lover learning kisses for the first time, tentative and exploratory.

Henry's mouth twitched, as though he meant to return this oddly intimate gesture. He'd not kissed any but a lass or two a very long time ago, and still did not have the faintest idea what to do with Jonathan or his kisses.

Then Jonathan went to work at some other mischief. He threw Henry's wig across the room and he kissed at Henry's temples as his hands moved over the exposed scalp in oddly titillating patterns and then eased down to work at the distinctive pastor's cravat.

"Jonathan," Henry whispered as his own hands settled on the man's shoulders, "what are you doing?"

"Undressing you," Jonathan mumbled against his lips.

"Stop," Henry said. A streak of shock and fear trembled through him like lightning.

"Why?" Jonathan asked as he pulled the stiff white cloth away and began to work on the lines of buttons on waistcoat and shirt.

"Because…" Henry was slowly losing his own connexion to reason. "This is… improper, and-and… you do not want this; it is only the madness."

"And in madness is a clarity you would find shocking," Jonathan replied feverishly as his spidering fingers grew desperate and harsh in their work of disrobing. "If I do not want this, why am I still doing it?" And he bent to kiss and lick at the wedge of pale skin he had revealed from neck to sternum, and increasingly lower. "And if you do not want this, why are you still allowing it?"

Henry made some high-pitched sound he'd never made before and felt another flash run through him, this time of what was unmistakably libidinous pleasure streaking up and down his spine and swelling his member to even greater hardness.

"Please," Henry said, too far gone for much of anything other than begging.

"Yes," Jonathan agreed to whatever it was he imagined Henry meant until the whole of Henry's torso was arrayed beneath him. Jonathan kissed up under his jaw as his tricksy fingers worked their way from shoulders to chest to ticklish sides to heaving belly. 

"Oh God," Henry said, and was incapable of any more speech at all when Strange ducked his head to teethe at a peaked nipple.

Henry writhed beneath him, overwhelmed by this thing - this _lust_ \- that he had never in his life experienced before.

Then Jonathan's hand smoothed over the fabric of his breeches to cup Henry's hardness and Jonathan asked him, "Well?"

Henry made a sound like some dying thing. Whatever it was, it was not a denial.

So Jonathan made a hard heel of his palm and encouraged Henry to grind against him in hopeless little motions and Jonathan busied his other hand at his own breeches, undoing the ties at the back until he finally stood to drop them down his legs and kick them away along with his shoes.

Before Henry thought to take advantage of his brief freedom (although he felt abruptly cold and alone without the man's heat and weight atop him), Jonathan pulled off the reverend's shoes and undid the buttons at the man's knees.

Henry himself moved without thinking about it and discovered that he was undoing his own breeches. Everything was drawn down and away, or almost everything. When Jonathan lay back down upon him, Henry found that they were both still wearing their stockings, and the feel of their barely-clothed calves rubbing together was far more arousing than he could have imagined.

But then Jonathan thrust at him, and their bare pricks moved in tandem against one another, and Henry did not even know how to be quiet as some strange, desperate whining came from his own throat at the overwhelming sensations. 

Jonathan's hands scrabbled for purchase at Henry's hips while he mouthed bruising kisses into Henry's lower neck, finding these mysterious patches of skin that seemed connected to all of Henry's most intimate parts. 

At first, Henry could only wind his grasping hands into the mottled black housecoat for something to hang onto, but then he clutched along the man's back to find the sinuous movement of muscles through too many layers of fabric, and then he snuck his curious hands lower to find Jonathan's bare waist and ease up under shirt and waistcoat and jacket to measure the plane of a lightly furred abdomen. 

They paused to wrestle in near-silence with Jonathan's too-many buttons until they were both laid open to one another and could lay their naked flesh together from knees to shoulders.

Hands could move freely now, testing and clutching and grasping. Jonathan pinched at the most interesting places, making Henry squeal with something that was not quite delight, while Henry himself often simply held his hand in one place, to marvel at the movement of skin and muscle and blood beneath his uncertain palms and fingers.

Jonathan's kisses persisted, covering Henry's face and jaw, finding the secret patches of pleasure behind his ears, and returning to his sensitive neck before meeting his lips again, creating some loop of eroticism that connected viscerally to his prick.

Jonathan then reached between them to take first one then the other of them in a stroking fist before fitting them both together in one hand the best he could and showing Henry how to thrust together like this in fitful little motions.

Henry wrapped his arms around Jonathan like a shipwreck victim to floating debris. He could do nothing but hang on as Jonathan moved them together and strung the pleasure out between them like a serenade.

Suddenly, Jonathan jumped up, leaving Henry flushed and vacant as he stared up at the cracked ceiling in bewildered want. He caught at his breath until his lungs worked in something like a normal rhythm again and he looked about to find Jonathan standing there, all his buttons undone and the wings of the housecoat trailing behind him. He held an unlit lantern in one hand as his hard prick jutted forward and for a moment the only thing he did was stand there and look down at the sight of Henry on his bed.

Henry felt the guilt of so many things come crashing down around him as his bearings slowly returned to him that he tried to sit up and find some escape, but when he did and only got so far as sitting upon the edge of the bed, Jonathan caught his shoulder in his free hand, looked into Henry's eyes, and said, "Shhhhh…"

He thumbed at Henry's wet and reddened lips until he sunk the digit into the slack mouth.

Henry did not know what to do, but he slowly closed his lips and teeth around the thumb and made a small sucking motion, as though this reaction was somehow involuntary.

Jonathan gasped and Henry felt his own prick twitch, even as his shoulders were collapsing in on themselves in mortification.

Jonathan's mouth was lax with parted lips and his wild eyes so deep and wide and open that the lust written so plainly on his face was a marvel to behold. He withdrew his thumb to replace it with his forefinger, which Henry found tasted first of salt, then of soap, a bit of dinner, and finally of ink.

Without a word between them, Jonathan chased Henry back up onto the bed.

The magician loomed in and forward until Henry eased back so that all of him was spread out on the bed and Jonathan kneeled between his legs. He abruptly bent down and Henry was unsure what the man was about until he felt a kiss to the crown of his prick.

Henry's head fell back onto the bedding with a muffled thump and he fought to hold back the cry that wanted to tear itself from his throat as Jonathan began to suckle at him.

Then that finger - the finger Henry had wetted with his own deceitful mouth - began to draw patterns into the skin of hip and thigh and then around the sac of his bollocks and finally further in toward a place Henry rarely thought of.

The feeling should have been unpleasant Henry thought with what brainpower was left to him. Still, it was like a bucket of rational water poured upon him as he lifted his head in confused discomfort. 

The wet finger petted over his crinkled opening before sinking in and in and in.

"What--" Henry asked as shock shuddered through him, "What are you doing?"

"A trick I learned in the army," Jonathan answered simply and crooked his finger.

Henry gasped in awful pleasure as his head again fell back and he thrust up into the still air and--

And Jonathan again took him into his mouth and Henry had not a clue what to do with the confused wash of pleasure that flushed through him in waves of delirious delight.

Jonathan's quest at his backside surged forward rather quickly when Henry realized what the unlit lantern was for.

Jonathan made of cup of his hand and poured in a measure of the lantern oil. He coated his fingers in the stuff and returned to Henry's opening and Henry had the distinct impression that there was a turning point somewhere here.

But when Jonathan reached down, Henry spread his legs and decided that perhaps that point had already been passed.

Jonathan watched with fire in his eyes as Henry allowed this little invasion and held himself so still as though to measure each moment in carefully recorded memory while his hands entwined the bedding in a death grip.

Having set the lantern aside, Jonathan scrambled to find a pillow. "Up," he breathed with a tap to Henry's hips, and Henry slowly elevated himself, allowing the pillow to be shoved beneath him.

Henry turned his eyes to the ceiling and tried to ignore how very hot his own face felt.

Jonathan's finger inside him became two and Henry hardly knew what to do with his own body except feel, and even that became a good deal more complicated when Jonathan squeezed the base of his cock and licked it all over.

Henry was trembling and could not stop.

Jonathan rutted against the mattress as he feasted on the man laid out before him, applying his mouth in every way he knew and some he made up on the spot. He tongued the weeping slit and sucked hard on the head and took as much as he could into his mouth to lave the underside with his rough tongue.

Tears leaked from Henry's eyes in some physiological response he did not understand.

Jonathan drew back to watch Henry as he shoved another finger into the man and pressed and twisted and stretched and curled.

Henry writhed as he shivered and wept, as though a deluge of feeling had flooded him with nerve-endings and electricity and fear and tremulous love, and there wasn't a thing to be done about it.

Jonathan, with his fingers still buried deep in the quivering body, leaned over Henry to tell him, "I love you," before he kissed the man and pulled back again in another shocking retreat and Henry could only tremble and watch as the man poured the remainder of the lamp's oil over his own hard prick.

When Jonathan kneeled between those pale thighs spread wide and laid the hot length of his body atop him, Henry asked, "What are you doing?" not because he did not know, but because he did not know _why_.

"I'm…" Jonathan gasped at the sensation of hot, sparsely-haired skin beneath him. "I don't know," he confessed as he reached down and aligned himself, rubbing the blunt head of his cock at the stretched but still virgin entrance.

The only sound in the room was their harsh panting as Jonathan eased into him, the angle awkward, and the pressure too astoundingly great, and everything perfect perfect perfect.

Then they cried out in disbelief as they stared into one another's eyes and did not waver, half-afraid to move once Jonathan was inside him as they heaved shuddering breaths in and out, not even daring to blink.

Jonathan slowly arranged himself. His eased one hand and arm under Henry's shoulder and neck in an embrace, and his other hand - still slick with oil and worse - dragged along Henry's hip to find his hand and entwine their fingers together. 

Henry huffed out a whine of need as they clutched at one another, and then Jonathan pushed his hips forward and Henry gasped in an amazement made of pain and pleasure together.

Jonathan taught him how to move in these shallow, plunging shoves that contrived to build a coil of pleasure between them that ratcheted higher with every motion.

Of his own accord - following some instinct he did not know he had - Henry lifted a leg up and out of the way to give Jonathan greater access, and as soon as he did, the man found a way to thrust deeper into him. Henry cried out and he gripped Jonathan's hand so tightly they felt one another's accelerating pulses in one another's wrists.

As a matter of fact, they pulsed together in many ways, from the erratic pattern of their breathing to the stuttering pattern of their hips. And still Jonathan hovered above him somehow, maintaining this wordless connexion of their eyes like some strange journey of soul to soul even as he moved within him.

Jonathan felt his control slipping. He dropped his forehead to Henry's shoulder and shifted to hold the man's hips in place as he thrust wildly into him over and over, the fiery line of his pleasure pulled taut to the point of snapping. He bit at whatever skin was beneath his mouth and pushed forward and in again and again until his release spilled out in a long string of perfect pleasure, loud and hard and heavy as his hips stuttered and stilled and his breathing came in harsh pants like a death rattle.

He'd collapsed upon Henry, and after a moment's recovery he found he'd bit a harsh mark into the man's upper chest and drooled profusely on him in his energetic expenditures. 

Jonathan licked and kissed at the mark to soothe it before paying homage to Henry's enflamed lips. A bit shaky, Jonathan withdrew, easing himself from the wracked body and then drawing himself down the sweating skin until he could take Henry's hard and leaking cock into his eager mouth.

Henry hardly knew what to do, but Jonathan guided his hands to his tangled hair and Henry eagerly weaved his fingers into it as his hips jerked up and Jonathan only encouraged him, bobbing his head as he sucked with vicious friction.

Henry fucked up into his mouth uncontrollably until he spent himself in a silent orgasm like stars and lightening and gusting desert gales blowing through him.

With the lassitude of a fatigued snail, Jonathan drew himself back up along Henry's body to lay just beside him, all their ruined flesh pressed together with their sweat and saliva and emissions commingled. Jonathan mouthed at Henry's neck with the remains of distracted desire while Henry stared up at the ceiling and slowly came back to himself.

He turned to enclose Jonathan in a grasping embrace and weep. Henry wept as he had not since he'd seen for himself the body of his sister laid out in her funeral garb.

It had not occurred to Strange until that moment that he was not the only one who had lost the person dearest to him. 

What had passed between them just now… even Strange did not know what it was or what it meant or what it augured for their future. But he could do what needed doing now, and that was holding Henry, and petting the shorn locks of his bare head, and kissing his hot brow.

Henry clutched at him and moaned his cries into Jonathan's sweat-slick shoulder as he screamed out the uncouth, wordless cries of a lonely man.

Jonathan did not move until Henry finally quieted himself and turned away, rolling onto his other side to curl into himself and make himself small.

Then Jonathan stood and fetched a wet cloth and cleaned them both, and gave them both cool water to drink, and then with the patience of a mad magician coaxed the petulant reverend under the bedraggled covers to sleep, with bare limbs twined together and heads turned toward one another, even in their dreams.

= 

When Henry woke, his mouth was dry, and his entire body sore.

Jonathan was at his desk, mostly dressed and wholly invested in his writing. Henry did not know where he'd come by more paper.

Henry eased out from beneath the covers and retrieved his various articles of clothing. They had strayed all about the room somehow, and it was a very long time before he could make himself whole and presentable.

When a knock came at the door, Henry received the breakfast tray from from the servant girl and set it on the desk and ate what he could; it was not much. Jonathan did not appear to notice the food or the man who sat there and ate of it.

Henry drank but a mouthful of tea before he stood and picked up the small brown bag he'd brought for his travels.

"I know what I have to do," Jonathan was telling the little glass vial that sat on his desk. "I know what I have to do. I know what I have to do." He looked up to see Henry, almost immaculate in his dress, brushed clean of dust and wrinkles, wig settled and neat, battered valise clutched in one hand.

"You're going, then?" Jonathan asked.

"Yes." Henry's unoccupied hand clenched and unclenched at his side.

Jonathan stood and strode across the room to open the door.

Henry was not quick to exit, hesitantly moving forward until he stood beside his brother-in-law, just looking at him.

Jonathan shut the door again, shoved Henry against it, and kissed the breath from him. "You must go. It's time to go. You must go, now."

"Yes," Henry agreed.

They moved apart. Jonathan opened the door, and Henry walked through it. 

He turned to regard the magician one last time, taking in the look of him, from wild hair and dark eyes to trembling hands and bare feet.

Jonathan Strange smiled at him, tremulous and beatific. And closed the door.

= = = = =

The End


End file.
